Agreed. Gary Taubes has written three high quality books on the subject. The most technical and heavily referenced are Why We Get Fat and The Case For Keto. The latter was just published.
I’ve been following a low glycemic diet for decades, but Taubes explains technically why it minimizes fat deposition.
If I start eating snacks like candy or corn chips, the weight gain is immediate and obvious. Not all calories are the same - some foods just “go to your hips”.
Eating low carb and switching to high carb will cause significant water weight increase due to increased muscle glycogen. On the order of 5-10lbs. It's not fat.
Excess calories can be stored as fat. Carbs that drive high insulin levels end up being converted to fat, and the subsequent low blood sugar level promotes more carb consumption.
This does not happen with protein and fat consumption. If you force yourself to overeat those foods in the absence of carbs, which is not easy, they will be simply eliminated.
You're saying that eating excess calories in the form of fat won't be stored as fat? That's the most efficient pathway and was critical to our survival.
What you're referring to (excess carbohydrates converted to fat) is denovo lipogenesis which is exceedingly inefficient and rare in humans.
My personal experience over several decades aligns with what Taubes explains in the first book I cited. If you want the technical details, you could read it.
You can't get fat on a diet that is strongly deficient in carbs, while it's easy to get fat on a diet containing high proportions of fat and carbs.
The Eskimo subsist on meat and blubber alone. Roald Amundsen ran the experiment on himself and confirmed it.
The group of people you're referencing (Inuit people btw, Eskimo is a slur) have some of the highest obesity rates in the world! The Nunavuts have an obesity rate of 48%!
The ethiopians have a diet of mostly carbohydrates (>70%), and are extremely lean.
Taubes is a bullshit artist who cherry picks data to sell books.
Not the person you addressed, but people are not lab rats whose daily caloric amount is controlled by a lab technician.
We humans in rich countries eat ad libitum. Any dietary intervention that helps us feel less hungry will lead to a reduction in the calories we consume.
I’ve been following a low glycemic diet for decades, but Taubes explains technically why it minimizes fat deposition.
If I start eating snacks like candy or corn chips, the weight gain is immediate and obvious. Not all calories are the same - some foods just “go to your hips”.